TW: RAPE

Disclosure: All names have been changed and permission was given to tell this
story.
The fall in which I started my freshman year of college my best friend in the world
was raped. She had moved over ten hours from home, and from me, to begin her
own college education. I remember when she called me at one in the morning and
just seeing her name light up on the screen told me that something was wrong. She
didnt speak for the first five minutes after I answered. All I could hear on her end of
the line was dry, desperate sobs echoing through her body.
One week later, after buying out of an apartment lease, and putting every item she
could into her green Saturn, Elizabeth came home. The first time I saw her she
smiled at me and hugged me and she acted like nothing had happened to her.
When I asked her what the police were doing to stop the man who had hurt her, she
admitted that she had not involved the police. When I asked why, she looked at me
with the saddest eyes and said: I was in his house, who would believe me? Who
would punish him? She never cried.
It was almost six months later, at the surprise birthday party that we had thrown for
her, that I saw Elizabeth break down. I was walking about at the party and couldnt
find her anywhere. Stepping out on the porch I saw her silhouette, smoking what I
assumed was not her first cigarette and looking up. I sat down next to her and laid
my head on her shoulder. The cries she made were silent. They were shaky gasps,
ripping through her body as she tried her hardest to keep the tears from coming. I
had cried like that before and I knew that she was afraid if she didnt find a way to
stop she would drown in her own sadness.
I took her head and held it close to me. I felt her body shake and I just wanted there
to be a way for me to take this out of her, I wanted to make every bit of pain that
she felt disappear into nothingness, I genuinely wanted to kill the person who had
done this to her.
We talked and talked that night. Sometimes she cried, sometimes I cried. She
confided in me that she felt she would never be as happy as she was before the
rape again. She said that he had robbed her of the amazing life she was building
and she looked at me and asked if it was alright to hate him.
Rape victims, women especially, are conditioned to shrink away and act like what
happened is okay. They are told that their accusations and voices will hurt the
person they claim hurt them. As if the pain that she could instill upon him could
ever measure up to what he had done to her. Women are silenced with questions
like:
What were you wearing?
What were you drinking?

Were you flirting?

Dont you think there was just a simple misunderstanding?
How, in any society, can these words be used against women who have lost a part
of themselves? Why is it that when someone is destroyed from the inside out we
cannot stop and help them up? We cannot support them, and punish the people
responsible for the cruelty, no instead we leave them where they lie and sometimes
we kick them until they promise never to speak about what has happened to them.
Every year thousands of women are raped in the United States alone. Most of these
are never reported to the police. Most of the people reported are not prosecuted.
And those prosecuted rarely serve jail time.
I do not understand this. Correction, I refuse to understand this. It is not that my
mind cannot wrap itself around the fact that evil people can get away with evil
things, but it is simply that I will not allow that to ever be something I can
understand. If I were to accept it, there would never be an end to the problem. And
thats where we are. People are accepting their fates. My best friend knew that no
one would believe her, she knew that her accusations would go unheard and that
she would face more speculation than the man that held her down and destroyed
her from the inside out.
I want this to end. I want human beings who have been tormented by rape, assault,
harassment, any form is injustice, to stand up and not let themselves be pushed
back down. I want to wake up in thirty years, and if I have a daughter, I want to let
her walk to her best friends house without fearing that I will never see her again. I
want to see my best friend smile again.
There is so much more to say about this. There are so many stories and experiences
to be shared. Maybe if we begin to tell them, the world will stop covering its ears
and see the vileness of this thing we call rape culture.